ARTICLES ABOUT TAX HAVENS BY DATE - PAGE 3

Given a choice of priority, should Indian authorities be chasing black money in circulation within the country or the illicit billions held in foreign banks? It is a nobrainer. Money whisked away abroad is tiny compared with the unaccounted money within India. Yet, the political system has long been barking up the wrong tree; the ongoing debate on black money has been no different. On Thursday, however, finance minister Arun Jaitley asked tax officials to turn the gaze inside. It makes sense on other counts, too. Indians hold assets abroad through multiple trails of offshore shell companies and hundreds of accounts in tax havens.

NEW DELHI: The government is yet to decide on whether the controversial general anti-avoidance tax law GAAR should be implemented as scheduled and has enough time to review that, an official said today. "The issue of GAAR was not on the table for this Budget. It was not an issue on which the government had to make an announcement in this Budget. The deferment of GAAR till March 31, 2015... We are still about eight months away from that," Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das said in a post-Budget interaction with industry body CII. "There is enough time for the government to review that and it is the fact that the new government is yet to take view on GAAR," he added.

MUMBAI: Stocks fell on Friday as fears of a new tax regulatory regime frightened investors already disappointed by the absence of transformative proposals in the Union Budget . The Sensex fell 1.37% and the Nifty slipped 1.43% led by SBI, the country's biggest bank, and L&T, the country's biggest engineering and construction firm. The Sensex posted its biggest weekly loss of 3.6% since December 2011. The markets corrected sharply intraday after the government reiterated that General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR)

MUMBAI: A handful of UK and US-based foreign institutional investors (FIIs) who aggressively interpret the law to escape tax in India will now feel the pinch. These funds pay neither the shortterm capital gains tax nor the higher income tax with the help of tax structuring and classification of earnings. They declare their profits from stock trades in cash and derivatives market as "business income" to avoid paying 15% tax on short-term capital gains. Simultaneously, they avert 40% tax (as applicable to foreign companies in India)

By Uma Shashikant The expectations from the union Budget are increasing every day. Despite a high level of secrecy surrounding the documents and the process, there is enough speculation about what may happen. While the government may be keen to lay down the road map for the next five years, the public — including global and domestic investors — expects more. Given the weight of expectations, the government cannot risk letting go its first opportunity to announce its policy agenda.

NEW DELHI: The government is likely to defer implementation of the controversial GAAR provisions by one more year to April 2017 and exempt transactions made up to March 2013 in a bid to improve business sentiment. The government earlier proposed imposing the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) from April 1, 2016, for those claiming tax benefit of over Rs 3 crore. The rules are aimed at minimising tax avoidance for investments made by entities based in tax havens. The Finance Ministry, which is preparing the budget for 2014-15, is considering deferring implementation of GAAR by one year with a view to improve business sentiment and promote investments and growth, official sources said.

MUMBAI: Swiss bank account holders who have been quietly celebrating the exit of P Chidambaram now have another reason to rejoice. Almost three-fourths of the 600 or so named in the list of clients of HSBC Geneva are beneficiaries of " discretionary trusts ". These individuals are confident that a Supreme Court ruling this week on offshore trusts will get the taxman off their back. Tax officials have been pursuing offshore accounts held by Indians, especially those on the HSBC list that originated with an employee of the bank.

NEW DELHI: As they continue their efforts to clamp down on the menace of black money, India and other countries will have to wait at least till 2017 before the new global standard for automatic exchange of tax information comes into effect. India, Switzerland and 45 other nations had agreed upon automatic exchange of tax information, which is seen as a major step forward in global efforts against banking secrecy practices. The endorsement of the 'Declaration on Automatic Exchange of Information in Tax Matters' under the aegis of think-tank OECD last week had paved the way for finalising a single global standard in this regard later this year in September.

MADURAI: Senior Supreme Court advocate Ram Jethmalani today said Congress President Sonia Gandhi had committed a "blunder" by meeting Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari. Talking to reporters here, he said Congress spoke about secularism and seek support of Muslim clerics for votes. The party had been following vote bank politics, and it was a dangerous strategy, he said. Jethmalani, who is here to campaign for MDMK candidate Vaiko in Virudhunagar Lok Sabha constitutency, sought the support of Tamil super star Rajinikanth to make Narendra Modi as Prime Minister.

AHMEDABAD: Milking 'chai wala' barb against him for all its worth, Narendra Modi sipped tea at ease as he interacted with the common man across 1000 places through video, attacking Congress over governance and black money, which he promised to bring back after becoming prime minister. The BJP's prime ministerial nominee , who has made senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's jibe at his humble origin, when he sold tea with his father, a political weapon to hit out at Congress while connecting with the masses, likened bad governance to diabetes which drains a nation of its vitality.